


your voice in silence

by darlingofdots



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Angst, Cam Gets Her Necro Back, F/M, Hand Jobs, Light Bondage, Oral Sex, Post-Harrow the Ninth (Locked Tomb Trilogy), scientific method but sexy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-13 17:47:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29405736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlingofdots/pseuds/darlingofdots
Summary: Camilla Hect sat in the opposite corner of the room, her back against the brushed-steel wall and her arms wrapped around her knees. She did not look at him, he could not see her face; he would have known her without hesitation in a crowd of thousands.She did not look at him, and she was too still.Palamedes is returned to his body, and Camilla can't quite believe it.
Relationships: Camilla Hect/Palamedes Sextus
Comments: 8
Kudos: 38
Collections: CamPalentine'sDay 2021





	your voice in silence

**Author's Note:**

> Happy CamPalentine's Day 2021!
> 
> Thank you to my friends [syntheseas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/syntheseas/pseuds/syntheseas) and [Elldritch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elldritch/pseuds/Elldritch) for beta reading, and [ChillyWeirdoInACoffin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChillyWeirdoInACoffin/pseuds/ChillyWeirdoInACoffin) for organising this whole event!

The first thing he knew was that he was drowning; the brackish, bloody water of the River rising in the psychological vestige of his lungs, panic building as he tried desperately to remember that oxygen was a hallucination here in the ramshackle hideout on the banks of the River. The deluge carried him to the ceiling of the refuge he had built for himself here, that cruel recreation of his final moments, crushing him against the shockingly solid rock. Had he outstayed his welcome at last? Palamedes Sextus closed his eyes and died a second time.

The next thing he knew was that he was dying of thirst; his mouth and throat and tongue were dry as the deepest recesses of the Library stacks. There were people around — voices, the rustling of fabric, heartbeats — and the next five minutes were a great flurry of activity. Someone trickled a few spoonfuls of cold water between his chapped lips, took his pulse, his temperature, peered into his burning eyes with a very bright light.

A voice he recognised as Harrowhark’s said, “This is the greatest feat of necromancy —” and someone else said, “Yes, you’re a genius, we know.”

It was less breathing and more coughing, but strong hands helped him sit and patted his back as he wheezed, eyes streaming in the light. The air burned in his lungs until his system flooded with sweet, crisp oxygen and time finally slowed; from the panicked rush of drowning to something like serenity.

Once he had recovered himself, he took stock of what was going on. He had been lying on a lumpy mattress in a bare, steel-walled room not unlike the research labs on the Sixth, naked, covered by a sheet. Harrowhark was still fussing about him, hovering on the edge of his awareness like a bone-clad mosquito, scribbling notes, and occasionally poking the tip of her pen into the inside of her cheek before withdrawing it again, glistening red. Gideon Nav hovered awkwardly between them, halfway between shadowing her adept and slapping Palamedes on the back when he started sputtering again.

“Do you have full control of your limbs?” Harrowhark asked, bloody pen poised over her scruffy notebook, and proceeded to prod at the soles of his feet to check his reflexes.

Camilla Hect sat in the opposite corner of the room, her back against the brushed-steel wall and her arms wrapped around her knees. She did not look at him, he could not see her face; he would have known her without hesitation in a crowd of thousands.

She did not look at him, and she was too still.

Tearing his gaze away, he asked Harrowhark what process she had used; she showed him her sheet of notes. It had taken a lot of effort to communicate from his River refuge, even once he had gotten the hang of connecting his consciousness to the remains of his bones through the thinnest sliver of spiders’ silk that tied him to them. He did not know how long it had taken, in the real world, but once he had figured out the network of theorems it would take to even attempt to fish his soul from the river and stuff it back into what remained of his body, h’d sat in the middle of his imaginary room and tapped the instructions out in Acoustic Code, hoping somebody was around to transcribe them. It seemed to have worked; they had used it on Gideon first, who’d apparently still had a body to return to, and somewhere along the line Camilla had dragged him up the divine ladder to Lyctorhood.

“Shame about your eyes,” Gideon said, her own conspicuously caliginous. Beside her, Harrow turned her gaze to the ceiling in silent exasperation, golden irises disrupting the monochrome monotony of her painted face.

There was more; Palamedes did not process a word of it. If Harrowhark noticed his eyes glazing over, she did not let that deter her. Gideon, taking pity on him, handed him a bottle of water, which he drained, and shortly thereafter the Reverend Daughter ran out of steam, huffing something about  _ utmost urgency _ , but she only stabbed the pad of his thumb to get a blood sample and swept out through the autodoor, Gideon on her heels.

It was very quiet without them in the room. Palamedes felt his own heartbeat reverberate in his chest, strong and defiant, cutting through the background noise of other, stranger heartbeats whose owners were blurred but vivid impressions of thalergy in his perception. Now that he had noticed it the sensation was overwhelming, drowning out all other perception until he forced his awareness inward and concentrated on his own newly-vibrant body. It felt alien to him, even though it was as much his own as it possibly could be, under the circumstances.

Instinctually, he reached up to adjust his glasses, then realised he was not wearing them. He blinked at the room which, he realised, now that he had acclimatised to this new kind of perception, was sharp and clear.

“You don’t need them anymore.”

The words washed over him like warm honey, the antithesis to the brine of the River beyond death, even as he blinked the last tear from his streaming eyes, and peered into the direction of that perfect, low voice, slightly rough around the edges but still music to his ears.

He rubbed at his chin and said, “I see,” even though he didn’t.

She said nothing.

The sheet that had covered him had dropped to pool in his lap, a scratchy heap of synthetics. Across his legs, two woven bands of polyester held him tightly in place. Two more dangled from the sides of the bed — restraints. He picked one up, raising an eyebrow.

She had not turned her head, but she must have heard the movement. “Gideon almost broke my arms when she came to,” she said, conversationally. “Spasms.”

Palamedes nodded. “I see.”

Silence fell again, heavy and thick like nerve gas. He was so tired, and he had never been more awake. “Where are we?”

Her shoulders rose and fell again on a sigh. “Some planet far away from home.”

Harrowhark had explained how they’d gotten here, and he had processed maybe half of it. There were too many pieces missing from his puzzle, too many loose threads he did not understand. He wanted to pick at them like he always picked at questions until everything unravelled and made sense, but he filed those questions away in the endless folder at the back of his mind and concentrated on what was important.

“Cam,” he said, his own voice still rough and new. “You haven’t looked at me.”

This, at last, made her turn her head. Her hair was too long, the fringe hanging in her eyes, and her expression was blank. She did not meet his gaze. Palamedes could have wept at the sight of her face, strange and impassive though it was, which was more familiar to him than his own and beautiful beyond description, despite its plain features. He had not slept in his refuge from oblivion, because there was no rest in the River, but he had lain on the bed and closed his eyes and conjured the memory of that face in painstaking detail, from the top of her head to the line of her jaw, and he had taken comfort in it like he could not take comfort from anything else.

He knew Camilla Hect as he knew himself, perhaps better than he knew himself, but the face that stared past him at the wall with blank eyes did not belong to the Camilla Hect he knew. It wasn’t just the colour; his own familiar eyes staring out from her face, the bent frame of his spectacles perched on her nose, was a shock, but one he had been expecting. She had never been effusive, or prone to displays of emotion. But he had always been able to read her eyes. Looking at her now, there was nothing there for him to read.

How long had she been alone? How many months, how many years ago had he left her behind without so much as a warning?

His new-found breath stuck in his throat. “Camilla. I am so sorry.”

She dropped her forehead to rest on her knees. “You always say that.”

When they were very young — six, maybe seven years old — the Archivist had called him to her office and been very surprised when he came by himself. After that, he noticed that people said their name differently: Sextus-and-Hect, Camilla-and-Palamedes. For as long as he could remember, here had been an invisible string connecting them, from his heart to hers, that tied them together as irrevocably as two magnets, no matter where they were. They were a package deal, all up in each other’s pockets, with no room for secrets.

He had always known how she felt, until now.

“Cam…”

“Don’t,” she warned, muffled, her voice cracking. “Don’t do this to me.”

Palamedes felt the blood drain from his face. He wanted to leap to his feet, drop to the floor next to her, and gather her up in his arms like he had since they were children whenever she’d gotten hurt, or woke from a nightmare, but something told him that would be the worst possible thing for him to do. Judging by the set of her shoulders, the least she might do was stab him right between the ribs, if he wasn’t careful.

Bending forward, he undid the restraints that held his legs in place and swung his feet to the floor, clutching the scratchy sheet. There were a million and one things he could have said, but his foolish, treacherous mouth just said, “It’s me.”

Across the room, as far away as was physically possible, Camilla raised her head. “It’s not, though. It never is. I’ll wake up any minute.”

She was not crying — he could not remember the last time she had cried. He said, “This is not a dream.”

“How would you know?”

That was a valid argument. He ducked his head, appropriately chastened. “Fair point. I suppose we’ll have to consider this scientifically.” He attempted to adjust his glasses again, almost stabbed himself in the eye when his finger met no resistance, and squared his shoulders, making every attempt to look serious and dignified despite his current state. “One, hypothesis. You first.”

A sound escaped her that was almost a laugh, but came out more like a sob. This was familiar ground. “Hypothesis: this is a dream. Maybe a hallucination.”

Palamedes very much wanted to interrogate that, but held back. “Two, counter: this is reality. I’ll hear arguments.”

Camilla tapped the tips of her fingers to count, a painfully habitual gesture. “One, I have had this dream a million times and I have always woken up. Two, Harrowhark explained the theory of restoring a body to me, because I asked her to, and it’s impossible. She said so herself. Twice.” She took a deep, ragged breath. “Three, you died. You died, and you didn’t say goodbye, and I tore up the floorboards in that room to scrape enough of you together, and, four, you  _ left me _ . I tried, Warden, I really tried, but I can’t do what you asked of me. I have failed, and I must learn to live with that.”

If he had not known better, if he had not devoted his life to understanding the human body in all its intricate frailties, Palamedes Sextus would have believed his heart was breaking clean in two. He swallowed, hard, his throat still dry. “Counter: I have recently spent a lot of time in what is essentially an elaborate dream, and this is far more substantial. Counter the second: the process would be impossible for any normal necromancer, even one as talented as the Reverend Daughter, but Lyctoral integration changes all the equations. Unless I have severely miscalculated, it should merely be  _ damned hard _ .”

Across the room, Cam hiccoughed another startled laugh.

Palamedes held himself very still. “Counter the third: I feel so alive, Cam. I can taste the air. I can feel my heartbeat. Come here,” he said, struck by sudden inspiration, “let’s examine the evidence,” and was surprised when she actually did. She unfolded herself from the floor with choppy movements and a rattle of sword belts, but she sat next to him on the bed when he indicated she should. He held out his bare arm to her. She stared at it, his glasses slipping inevitably down her nose like an advancing glacier.

“I’m scared,” she said, very quietly, then: “I’m scared that if I touch you, you’ll disappear.”

“I won’t.”

There was a myriad between her nod, the set of her shoulders like a fighter stepping onto the mat, and the movement of her hand, her arm, her shoulder, the tip of one finger ghosting over his upturned palm. It tickled; the hair on his arm stood up and he had to resist the urge to flinch away.

“Counter the fourth,” he said, “I’m still here.” He bent his hand back, presenting his wrist. “I’m alive.”

Emboldened, Cam pressed her fingers to the pulse point, and he saw her close her eyes and silently count. As gently as he dared, he took her hand between his and raised it to his naked chest, where his resurrected heart beat in his reconstructed ribcage, and he said, “Counter the fifth: you could never fail me. If you cannot do something that I ask of you, I have simply asked too much.”

He took a deep breath, the weight of her palm shifting but not relenting. “Conclusion: I am so, so sorry.”

She bent her fingers, dug the blunt tips of her nails into his skin, dropped her head. Cautiously, as if approaching a skittish animal, Palamedes laid his hand on her shoulder and let her cry.

##

They did not stay like this for very long. Once the initial storm had passed, Cam settled into something more like weeping into his bare chest, but it was clear that the cistern of her grief had broken and what she needed was to empty herself out into the world and that was something he could help her with; it was the least he could do, really. He did wrap his arms around her, though, unable to stop himself. It grounded him, to have her close again, some semblance of normalcy in the bizarre.

“I heard your voice,” she said eventually, her face pressed against the slope of his shoulder. Her — his — glasses dug into his flesh but he did not move. “Just in dreams, at first. I knew those weren’t real — that was just wishful thinking. But then I started hearing it when I was awake, and you would tell me to pay attention to the conversation, or stop what I was doing and sit down, and I’d sit where I was and close my eyes and you were there next to me, like when we used to hide in the stacks as kids, and you were so  _ close _ .” She took a deep, ragged breath, and a change went through her body; like she was putting herself back together, piece by jagged piece. She jabbed him in the ribs with a well-aimed elbow. “Don’t you ever do this to me again.”

Palamedes rubbed at his side, grimacing. “I promise.” Turning, he put two fingers under her chin and raised her head from his shoulder. His own eyes stared up at him, puffy and red. “One flesh, one end.”

After a small lifetime, Camilla said, “If you are not about to kiss me, I’m going to throw you back in the River myself.”

So he kissed her.

Just the tip of her nose, at first, suddenly bashful, but she turned her face up and chased after him, nipping at his lips until he opened up for her. She tasted of salt, sharp and metallic, and when he tried to pull back she bit him; he gasped into her mouth, and he could tell she liked that. Her hand was still pressed to his heart but she reached for his face with the other, holding him close, tangling in his hair and digging her fingertips into the base of his skull. It hurt, and it grounded him more than any amount of deep breaths could have done — he leaned into it, embracing the pain, letting her mete out her measure of the punishment he so deserved for what he had done to her.

His hand had dropped to her waist, and he was starkly aware that, out of the two of them, she was fully clothed — including her swords — while all that stood between him and complete nakedness was a flimsy piece of material currently clinging precariously to his hips. They were still trading kisses, but that awareness settled hot and heavy in his stomach, so when Camilla took hold of his shoulders and pushed, he went without resistance. He lay back on the lumpy bed, arms above his head, and Cam scraped her teeth along the line of his jaw, down the column of his throat, biting at his collarbones.

“You are never leaving my sight again,” she said, brushing the flat of her hand over his nipple. “Say it.”

He hissed through his teeth and arched his back, prolonging her touch. “I am never leaving your sight again.”

She pinched him. He gasped. He may have writhed. “Promise?”

“Ahh, Cam, I swear, anything you want, I —”

She dropped her head to whisper in his ear; the ends of her fringe tickled his cheek. “Anything?”

“Anything.” He was light-headed again. She was braced with one knee on the bed, just barely brushing up against him, and it was taking all the control he had not to roll his hips.

With one hand, Cam reached for the discarded restraints. She pressed the thumb of the other to the dip below his bottom lip and sighed when he kissed it, then slipped it into his mouth. Palamedes swirled the tip of his tongue over the pad of her thumb, a little rough just like every part of her, groaning; he felt the loss when she withdrew to fit the restraints again, this time securing his wrists above his head with just enough slack that they would not cut off circulation.

“Say it.”

“I will never leave your sight again. I’m here. God, Cam, I’m here.” He was here, he was alive, he was all hers. He needed this just as much as she did, needed the reminder that he was a person instead of a ghost slowly descending into obscure madness, and the pressure of the ties around his wrists and the burning strain in his arms forced him to think with his body, forced the rapid fire of his synapses to zero in on the physical sensation of <i>having</i> a body. He was almost painfully aware of the position of his limbs, the sound of his own breath mingling with hers, the rush of blood to his groin when her lips brushed the sensitive inside of his forearm. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Camilla sat up, her fingers tearing at the buckles of her belts, then she tossed them aside and kissed him again, hard. This was apparently the final straw: her glasses gave up the fight against gravity and dropped from her face, hitting Palamedes’ cheek, and she let out a harsh snort of laughter at his indignant squawk.

“Really,” he huffed, jerking his head to the side to dislodge the offending article. “If you wanted to hurt me, I’m sure it can be arranged without resorting to projectile weapons.”

Hovering above him, Cam stilled, then nodded. “Alright.”

And so he lay there as she dismantled him, inch by inch, with her hands and teeth and tongue, pinching, biting, sucking, leaving marks that disappeared again almost instantly. He arched into every new bloom of pain, supplanted immediately by the rush of thalergy as the broken blood vessels knitted themselves back together and bruises faded to nothing. He was distantly aware of the noises he made, gasping and moaning into the empty room, until she offered him her hand again and he silenced himself on her fingers. He could not see her face like this, bent over his torso to nip at the soft flesh at his waist and his own head tipped back, but he could feel her; everywhere she touched him was a spark of bright, brilliant awareness of her body. He felt the movement of her muscles, the thrum of her pulse mirroring his own.

When she finally sat up again, lips red and swollen and her pupils blown wide in his eyes, he was alight with want. She had withdrawn her hand from his mouth to rest, wet and hot, on his thigh.

He swallowed, licked his lips. “May I see you?”

Shrugging, she gripped the hem of her shirt and drew it over her head, then casually discarded her bandeau as if the sight of her would not render him speechless. She gave him no time to admire or process, just kissed him again, brushing up against his chest as she leaned forward. She kissed him like a woman starved, like she wanted to take all of him into herself and never let go, and Palamedes let her. He let her, because he understood, and because he owed her everything, and because it made him lightheaded and desperate.

When she finally touched him, he screwed his eyes shut and groaned against her lips. It took all his willpower not to thrust into her hand but he pinned himself to the bed with determination alone, knowing this was for her as much as for him. She spat into her palm and drew her thumb over the head, roughly, making him gasp; her body was warm on his, holding him in place. Her hair whispered ghost-like over his skin, her tongue sliding over his in time with her hand on him.

He swore when he came, and said her name like absolution, and she rested her forehead against his, breathing hard. There were fresh tears in her eyes.

“Hey. I’m still here.”

She shook her head as if to chase away an insect. “You’re still here.” She raised her head and pressed her lips to his forehead, briefly, before withdrawing. “You’re still here, and you’re not going anywhere.”

Had he wanted to, Palamedes could not have moved. He watched in stunned, frozen silence as Cam clambered off the bed and shucked the rest of her clothes, his mouth watering at the sight, and then she swung her legs over him and entwined her hands with his and offered herself to him fully. He breathed in the smell of her, tasted her and drank her in, and tried to give her everything she asked for. He listened for her sighs and gasps and moans and redoubled his efforts when her legs began to tremble, licking, teasing, discovering that he did not, in fact, need to breathe — until she cried out and came with a shudder and he let her ride it out, still fluttering against his mouth, with deep, heaving breaths almost like sobs.

The bed was too narrow for the two of them. Cam untied him and rubbed his arms until sensation returned, then fitted herself with her front to his back, her arm tight around him, her face buried in the crook of his shoulder. Palamedes said nothing, just held her hand to his beating heart.

Eventually, she extracted herself and got up (if she wiped at her eyes as she did so, Palamedes did not comment). She splashed her face with water from the shaving sink then tossed him a damp towel and a bundle of clothes. They hit him square in the chest.

“Get up. We have work to do.”


End file.
